Jeffrey Sachs

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Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs
Sachs at The Earth Institute
Sachs at The Earth Institute
Born November 5, 1954 (1954-11-05) (age 54)
Detroit, Michigan
Residence U.S.
Nationality American
Fields Economics, International Development
Institutions The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Alma mater Harvard University
Known for shock therapy, Millennium Villages Project
Notable awards Harvard Centennial Medal (2007), Padma Bhushan (2007)

Jeffrey David Sachs (born November 5, 1954, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American economist and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia's School of Public Health. Additionally, he is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and the founder and co-President of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. From 2002 to 2006, he was the Director of the United Nations Millennium Project and today remains a leading advocate for the Millennium Development Goals, eight internationally endorsed objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger, and disease by the year 2015.

Originally one of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became renowned for implementing economic shock therapy throughout the developing world, and subsequently for his work on the challenges of economic development, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, debt cancellation, and globalization. He has authored numerous books and articles on these subjects, including The End of Poverty and Common Wealth, both New York Times bestsellers. He has been named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" several times.

Sachs lives in New York City with his wife Sonia Ehrlich Sachs, a pediatrician. They have three children.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Academic career

Sachs was raised in Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from Oak Park High School. He attended Harvard College, where he received his B.A. summa cum laude in 1976. He went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, and was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard graduate student. In 1980, he joined the Harvard faculty as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1982. A year later, at the age of 29, Sachs became a Full Professor of economics with tenure at Harvard.

During the next 19 years at Harvard, he became the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, the Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development at the Kennedy School of Government (1995-1999), and the Director of the Center for International Development (1999-2002).

After the Center for International Development failed to attract sustainable funding or broad scholarly involvement, Sachs resigned from Harvard in March 2002 to become the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City.[1] He is currently the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and he is also a professor for Columbia's Department of Economics and Department of Health Policy and Management. His classes are taught at the School of International and Public Affairs and the Mailman School of Public Health.

[edit] Work on Post-Communist Economies

Sachs is known for his work as an economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. A trained macroeconomist, he led many countries in the transition from communism to market economies.

In 1985, Bolivia was undergoing hyperinflation and was unable to pay back its debt to the International Monetary Fund. Sachs, an economic advisor to the Bolivian government at the time, drew up an extensive plan, later known as shock therapy, to drastically cut inflation by liberalizing the Bolivian market, ending government subsidies, eliminating quotas, and linking the Bolivian economy to the US Dollar. After Sachs' plan was implemented, inflation fell from 20,000% per year to 11%, though according to critics, left the country worse off than before due to a rise in unemployment, a fall in industrial output, and a fall in per capita GDP.[2]

In 1990, the Polish government introduced shock therapy to break from communism. Sachs and ex-IMF economist David Lipton advised the rapid conversion of all property and assets from public to private ownership. After initial economic shortages and inflation, prices in Poland eventually stabilized.[3]

In late 1991, the Russian government invited Harvard to give advice on reproducing the Polish success. Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer advised President Yeltsin on privatization and macroeconomic issues during the early stages of Russia's reforms. Sachs resigned shortly thereafter.

[edit] Work on Global Economic Development

More recently, Sachs has turned to global issues of economic development, poverty alleviation, health and aid policy, and environmental sustainability. He has written extensively on climate change, disease control, and globalization, and is one of the world's leading experts on sustainable development.[4]

In his 2005 work, The End of Poverty, Sachs wrote "Africa's governance is poor because Africa is poor." According to Sachs, with the right policies and key interventions, extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1 a day — can be eradicated within 20 years. India and China serve as examples, with the latter lifting 300 million people out of extreme poverty during the last two decades. Sachs believes a key element to accomplishing this is raising aid from $65 billion in 2002 to $195 billion a year by 2015. He emphasizes the role of geography and climate, with much of Africa suffering from being landlocked and disease-prone. However, he stresses that these problems can be overcome.[5]

Sachs suggests that with improved seeds, irrigation, and fertilizer, the crop yields in Africa and other places with subsistence farming can be increased from 1 ton/hectare to 3-5 tons/hectares. He reasons that increased harvests would significantly increase the income of subsistence farmers, thereby reducing poverty. Sachs does not believe that increased aid is the only solution. He also supports establishing credit and microloan programs, which are often lacking in impoverished areas.[6] Sachs has also advocated the distribution of free insecticide-treated bed nets to combat malaria. The economic impact of malaria has been estimated to cost Africa US$12 billion per year. Sachs estimates that malaria can be controlled for US$3 billion per year, thus suggesting that anti-Malaria projects would be an economically justified investment.[7]

From 2002 to 2006, Sachs was the Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to then Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. Sachs founded the Millennium Villages Project, a plan dedicated to ending extreme poverty in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa through targeted agricultural, medical, and educational interventions. Along with philanthropist Ray Chambers, Sachs founded Millennium Promise, a nonprofit organization, to help the Earth Institute fund and operate the Millennium Villages Project.

Now a Special Advisor to current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Sachs is still a leading advocate for the Millennium Development Goals, frequently meeting with foreign dignitaries and heads of state. He has also become a close friend of international celebrities Bono and Angelina Jolie, both of whom have traveled to Africa with Sachs to witness the progress of the Millennium Villages.[8]

Sachs has been a consistent critic of the IMF and its policies around the world. He has blasted the international bankers for what he sees as a pattern of ineffective investment strategies.[9]

[edit] Criticisms

One of Sachs' strongest critics is William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University. Easterly reproached The End of Poverty in his review for The Washington Post, and Easterly's 2006 book White Man's Burden is an even more thorough rebuttal of Sachs' argument that poor countries are stuck in a "poverty trap" from which there is no escape, except by massively scaled-up foreign aid. Easterly presents statistical evidence that he claims proves that many emerging markets attained their higher status without large amounts of foreign aid as Sachs proposes.[10]

Another Sachs critic is Amir Attaran, a scientist and lawyer and currently the Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development at the University of Ottawa. Sachs and Attaran have worked closely as colleagues, including coauthoring a famous study in The Lancet documenting the dearth of foreign aid money to fight HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, which led to the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. However, Sachs and Attaran part company in their opinion of the Millennium Development Goals, and Attaran argued in a paper published in PLoS Medicine and an editorial in the New York Times that the United Nations has misled people by setting specific, but immeasurable, targets for the MDG's (for example, to reduce maternal mortality or malaria).[11] Sachs dismissed that view in a reply to PLoS Medicine by saying that only a handful of the MDG's are immeasurable, but Attaran then cited the United Nations' own data analysis (which the UN subsequently blocked from public access) showing that progress on a very large majority of the MDG's is never measured.[12]

Sachs has also been criticized by leftists for having an overly neoliberal perspective on the economy. Nancy Holmstrom and Richard Smith pointed out that, in advising implementation of his shock therapy on the collapsing Soviet Union, Sachs "supposed the transition to capitalism would be a natural, virtually automatic economic process: start by abandoning state planning, free up prices, promote private competition with state-owned industry, and sell off state industry as fast as possible…". They go on to cite the drastic decreases in industrial output over the ensuing years, a nearly halving of the country's GDP and of personal incomes, a doubling of the suicide rate, and a skyrocketing unemployment rate.[13] The Lancet has recently reported that rapid privatization of the Soviet Union caused a 12.8% death rate increase among males in just two years[14], a claim that The Economist disputes.[15] Canadian activist Naomi Klein argues in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism that Sachs' Bolivian "success" is clearly not true. In her analysis, the radical reforms pushed by Sachs were neither democratically agreed upon nor achieved without violent state repression, and in her opinion, left the majority of Bolivians in far worse circumstances.[16]

[edit] Accolades and Affiliations

Sachs is the recipient of many awards and honors. In 2004 and 2005, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine. He was also named one of the "500 Most Influential People in the Field of Foreign Policy" by the World Affairs Councils of America.[17]

In February 2002, Nature Magazine stated that Sachs "has revitalized public health thinking since he brought his financial mind to it." In 1993 he was cited in the New York Times Magazine as "probably the most important economist in the world." In 1994, Time Magazine called him "the world's best-known economist." In 1997, the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur cited Sachs as one of the world's 50 most important leaders on globalization.[18]

In 2005, he received the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice. In 2007, Sachs was awarded the Padma Bhushan, a high civilian honor bestowed by the Government of India. Also in 2007, he received the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution International Advocate for Peace Award as well as the Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for his contributions to society.[18]

From 2000 to 2001, Sachs was Chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization, and from 1999 to 2000 he served as a member of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission established by the U.S. Congress. Sachs has been an advisor to the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Development Program. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Society of Fellows, the Fellows of the World Econometric Society, the Brookings Panel of Economists, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Board of Advisors of the Chinese Economists Society, among other international organizations.[18]

Sachs has received honorary degrees from Pace University, the State University of New York, Cracow University of Economics, Ursinus College, Whitman College, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Ohio Wesleyan University, the College of the Atlantic, Southern Methodist University, Simon Fraser University, McGill University, Southern New Hampshire University, St. John's University, Iona College, University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, the Lingnan College of Hong Kong, and the University of Economics Varna in Bulgaria.[18]

Sachs is first holder of the Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Chair in Poverty Studies at the Centre for Poverty and Development Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for 2007-2009. In addition, he holds an honorary professorship at the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. He has lectured at the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, and Yale University, as well as in Tel Aviv and Jakarta.[18]

In early 2007, the Sachs for President Draft Committee was formed to encourage Sachs to run for President of the United States in the 2008 election.[19]

In June 2008, Sachs gave the commencement address to the Class of 2008 at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prestigious New England prep school.

In September 2008, Vanity Fair magazine ranked Sachs 98th on its list of 100 members of the New Establishment.

In February 2009, it was announced that in May Sachs will give the commencement address to Lehigh University's Class of 2009[20].

[edit] Publications

Sachs is the author of hundreds of academic articles and many books, including two New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (Penguin, 2005) and Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin, 2008).

He currently writes a monthly foreign affairs column for Project Syndicate, a nonprofit association of newspapers around the world that is circulated in 145 countries.[21] He is also a frequent contributor to major publications such as the Financial Times, Scientific American, and Time Magazine.

[edit] Selected works

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Harvard Magazine: September/October, 2002
  2. ^ Greenwald, John. Time Magazine, 1989
  3. ^ Lipton, David and Sachs, Jeffrey. Foreign Affairs, 1990
  4. ^ The Earth Institute, Columbia University, 2008
  5. ^ United Nations Millennium Project, 2006
  6. ^ Booth, Mindy. UN Capital Development Fund, 2005
  7. ^ Medical News Today, 2007
  8. ^ Purcell, Myrlia. Look to the Stars: The World of Celebrity Giving, 2006
  9. ^ Sachs, Jeffrey. The Financial Times, 1997
  10. ^ Easerly, William. The Washington Post, 2005
  11. ^ Attaran, Amir. PLoS Medicine, 2005
  12. ^ Attaran, Amir. PLoS Medicine, 2005
  13. ^ Holmstrom, Nancy and Smith, Richard. Monthly Review, 2000
  14. ^ [1]
  15. ^ Mass murder and the market - The Economist, Jan 22nd 2009
  16. ^ Cockburn, Alexander. CounterPunch, 2007
  17. ^ British Broadcasting Company, 2007
  18. ^ a b c d e The Earth Institute at Columbia University, 2008
  19. ^ TruthDig, 2006
  20. ^ http://www3.lehigh.edu/News/V2news_story.asp?iNewsID=3107
  21. ^ Project Syndicate, 2008

[edit] External links

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